According to the Pattern (14 page)

The discreet maid said nothing. She saw that her
mistress was at high pressure. She noticed with satisfac
tion that the shrouding white had been removed from
the neck of the dress. She was glad that at last the world
would have a chance to see that Mrs. Winthrop was a
handsome woman, and knew how to dress as well as anyone.

The toilet was interrupted only by the arrival of a box
of most exquisite white orchids with Senator
Bradenberg’s card. With the light of battle still in her
eyes, Miriam fastened them in place as one more weapon
wherewith to dazzle the enemy, and as she did so blessed
the “kind old man” for having selected these costly
flowers, which otherwise she could never have hoped to wear.

It was the one touch the costume needed. Miriam
stood a moment and gazed startled at her own beauty.
She scarcely knew herself. She seemed to be looking at some other person critically, and to be more than satis
fied. The color in her checks from intense excitement
was more beautiful than any artist could have painted it,
the lustre of her eyes beyond the power of any drug to produce.

“You should let the children see you, ma’am, before
you go,” said the maid in admiration. “Miss Pearl is
likely to be awake yet, and Celia would soon hush off to sleep again.”

But Miriam shuddered. Let her little innocent chil
dren look upon her so? Never! The white neck and arms
that gleamed at her from the glass seemed dreadful to her
when she realized that she was throwing in what conscience she had left. She had staked all, and it must be
win or lose to-night. This she said to her heart as she
looked steadily into her own eyes in the glass.

She turned away and let the maid wrap about her
shoulders the long, white cloak, and said:

“No, don’t waken the children. I would rather they
would sleep. You need not sit up for me, I may be late.
Be sure the baby is well covered.”

Then she went down to meet her escort who had
arrived and take her seat in the carriage, and the door was slammed shut and she whirled away in the darkness.

Five minutes afterward Claude once more reached his own door, weary and faint and frightened.

Hold me but safe again within the bond

Of one immortal look! All woe that was,

Forgotten, and all terror that may be,

Defied—no past is mine, nofi4ture: look at me!

When I saw him tangled in her toils,

A shame, said I, if she adds just him

To her nine and ninety other spoils,

The hundredth for a whim!

—Robert Browning

CLAUDE Winthrop’s sharpened ears had caught the
sound of carriage wheels as he neared his own street. It
was a welcome sound, and he began to berate his wife
in his heart for giving him such an evening of suspense,
and, in spite of his own repentings, he forgot at once that
he was the cause of the trouble and put it upon her.

He heard the carriage door shut and the rumble
coming toward him, and looked keenly at the driver as the dark object came in sight. Was it the same carriage
in which Miriam had gone out that afternoon, and
where had she been all this time? Then just in front of a street lamp the carriage passed him and he caught the
gleam of white hair and a graceful head bent in deference
as only the bad senator could do, and caught a gleam of
something white beyond him, and a face out of the
darkness, and then suddenly fear took hold upon him.

He hastened his steps with renewed vigor, and fairly shook the door open when his fumbling key refused to give him entrance at once.

“Where is Mrs. Winthrop?” he demanded of the
startled maid as she appeared in answer to his ring.

“Why sir, she’s gone. She told me you were detained, and the carriage has come and she’s gone.”

“Gone?” he echoed the words wildly, his blood-shot eyes and haggard face making the girl wonder if he had been drinking.

“Why, gone to the Washburn party, of course,” she answered, edging nearer to the dining-room door.

Claude Winthrop tore off his overcoat and went
upstairs two steps at a time. He rushed from room to
room as if he hoped to find her there. Gradually it was dawning upon him that they had been going to the Washburns’ this night. He had forgotten until now. But
Miriam had not. It seemed she had gone despite what
had happened that afternoon. It came to him bitterly that she was able to face society with what there was between
them. It showed him plainly, he thought, that she had
long understood all that his call that afternoon upon Mrs.
Sylvester had meant to her. In sudden sharp fear the
possibility that she did not care so much as he had
supposed she would was presented to his mind.

The light was still burning brightly in her dressing
room, and on the dressing table lay the pasteboard box from which she had taken the orchids. One poor flower had been slightly bruised, and she had left it lying with the senator’s card, carelessly, on the tissue paper of the
box. Claude caught up the card and read, and horror
choked him, and a fire flamed up into his eyes. If Senator Bradenberg had been present just then it might not have been well with him.

Half frenzied the husband tore through the rooms
again, in the vain search for something to prove that it
was not true, that she was yet there, and he might explain
and all be made right between them, for he seemed to
know that he would never be at rest again until that
peace had come. It was a sign of the stirring of good in
his heart that he now began to have a little doubt as to whether this might ever be.

He went to the nursery at last. He touched the cool
foreheads of his boy and girl as they lay in their first
sound sleep, and then bent over the crib where lay his
baby. And it was in her soft neck, with her gold curls
folding all about his hot, tired eyes, and her sweet breath
coming and going regularly like the breath from a
meadow at evening when the cows are coming home,
that he was first able to think, and that a kind of
repentance for what had happened began to stir him to better things.

It was not long he stayed there, but he gained strength to think, and then knew that he must get him to the
Washburn house with all possible speed. The gay throng
was the last place he would have chosen in his present
state of mind, but he felt it imperative that he see his wife
at once and bring her home. After that all should be
made straight before he slept.

He kissed little Celia tenderly and went swiftly to
make his own toilet.

It was not the careful, prolonged affair that Claude Winthrop’s toilets were usually, even for an everyday function, and yet this was one of the great crushes of the season. But he did not care now. He was going in search
of his wife. A certain amount of care must be taken to
gain him entrance and prevent comment, but what
mattered the set of his necktie now?

Nevertheless he was delayed by little things, his hands
were nervous and trembling with excitement. In his
haste he had to undo and do things over again, and he
began to feel the lack of his dinner, yet he would not stop
to get anything.

And at last he was out on the street and started toward
the Washburns’. Even then it seemed to him as if he
were treading over and over the same ground like a
horse set to saw wood, and did not get on in spite of all
his efforts. And when he came in sight of the great house
with its canvas-guarded entrance and its many twinkling
windows it seemed to him the glitter of a hateful,
treacherous trap that had snared his beautiful wife.

The music and the dancing and the pomp and cere
mony and feasting were in full sway when he at last
entered and began his search.

Then, after all, it was not his wife but Mrs. Sylvester
who first met his searching gaze.

She was all in black to-night, black velvet, rich and sweeping and simple, and out of it her white shoulders
rose in all their loveliness. The only jewels she wore
were a string of diamonds about her throat, and dia
monds in the aigrette in her hair. The effect was startling.
Claude had never seen her all in black before, for she
affected much the dainty shades of blue and pink or white and gold. But it seemed to-night as if she had chosen her costume with a view to dazzling all who
beheld her.

In her hand she carried—and Claude could not help
but notice—a great handful of delicate lilies of the valley,
the flowers he had given Miriam on their wedding day.

And alas, the flowers he had often given this other
woman too.

It angered him that he noticed her at all, that he saw
how beautiful she was, that he did not hate the white
hands that held the lilies, the scornful lips that smiled at
him, and the treacherous eyes that summoned him so
imperatively. It amazed him that in his present state of
feeling he could notice details like flowers and recall
clearly all the sweetness and the bitter connected with them.

He did not answer her summons. He did not respond
to her unspoken greeting across the roomful of
unnoticing people. He only drew his brows together in
a heavy frown—the frown that some people had re
marked upon as being “interesting”---and glowered sack, and then turned his restless eyes to search the great ball room once more.

He did not look her way again. He would not, though
he was long conscious of her amused gaze still fixed upon
him as she talked to a circle of admiring men. It occurred
to him that with that same amused smile would she greet
death and destruction if they should chance to come her
way.

As soon as he could, for the crush, he made his way
slowly around the room, but not toward Mrs. Sylvester.
Always he kept it in mind to avoid the place where he had seen her, to avoid it even with his eyes. And thus
moving suddenly she spoke to him, startling him, as one
will start at finding the evil so carefully avoided in front standing just behind one.

How she had come there he did not stop to question.
He turned upon her angrily.

“Claude, you are a perfect bear! I have come to warn
you to take that frown from your face or you will
presently be the subject of comment. What is the matter?

That little meeting with your wife on my doorstep seems
not to have agreed with your fine temper, my dear. Was
she so very angry?”

There was pity in the well-modulated tone, the allur
ing pity that Mrs. Sylvester knew so well how to use
upon occasion, and it roused the soul of the half-frenzied
man nearly to distraction. He could have struck her as
she stood there in all her insolent beauty, speaking of his
peerless wife with such disdain. He could have struck
her, yet the hand that strikes was fettered by the tender
pressures he had once given to her hand, by the waxen blossoms he had disloyally brought to another than his
wife; and the white lips that would have uttered wither
ing words to her were sealed by the kiss he had once
placed upon her lips. Oh, horror of agony! How that kiss;
burned into his lips now and to his very soul, like the
sting of a venomous serpent!

There she stood before him with all her power about
her, all her beauty, all her unscrupulousness, and dared
to be what she was and to look him in the eyes and bid
him follow her.

He turned from her as one would have turned from
some hideous, loathsome sight, and would have moved
away without a word but that she laid her hand upon his
arm and walked beside him, and he could not rid himself of her except by shaking her off and bringing the eyes of
the assembled multitude upon them both. He was forced
to walk beside her, but he did it with his angry eyes fixed
straight ahead, and so soon as they were come to an
alcove where it was possible he stepped out of the crowd
and led her to a vacant seat.

She saw that for some strange reason he was proof
against her wiles to-night. He meant to leave her here
alone. He had not yielded to her startling beauty. She
knew it was startling, she had studied for days to make it
so. And yet it had failed!

Failed? Should she entertain such a thought? Not for
an instant! Summoning all her arts she said with a piteous
little sigh:

“Claude, you must bring me something from the
supper room. The heat has made me dizzy and faint. To
tell the truth I have been ill for a week, and I only made
the effort to get up and come here that I might see you
about something very important, and you declined to
come and see me, even though I warned you—”

“What shall I bring you?” he cut her short with his icy words as if impatient to have the disagreeable duty done.

“Claude,” she said reproachfully, her voice trembling, you are acting abominably. But I forgive you. Get me
something quick, at least a glass of water—” and she
leaned back against the cushions and dropped the deli
cate eyelids for an instant with a flutter of weakness,
though her color was too bright for one about to faint.

He cast one glance into her lace and thought he
detected deceit in her very attitude. But he went at once. Strange he could see so plainly now what but a few short weeks ago had been so charmingly veiled.

He scarcely knew what he got from the supper room,
anything to have the hateful duty done and be free, but when he brought it to her Mrs. Sylvester smiled faintly
and asked him to sit down beside her for just a minute
until she felt better. She took the glass he brought her
and sipped a few swallows.

“Wait!” she commanded impressively, suddenly drop
ping all her smiling ways and taking a new tone with
him, “I have something most important to tell you. It
will take but a moment, and indeed I must tell you
though you do not deserve it.”

He waited beside her impatiently. He could do no less
after her request although he felt that she was deceiving
him merely to keep him there. His natural politeness seemed to make it necessary that he remain for a few
minutes at least, and his cowardly spirit saw no way to
leave. But as she talked his eyes searched the brilliant
moving throng. He scarcely heard what Mrs. Sylvester
was saying, till he became conscious that she was speak
ing of Miriam: